baby penguin

For the past year or so, Liv has had a fixation with black and white animals. She goes through phases where she’s “into” a certain type of animal for awhile, then her fixation shifts to another cuddly animal for a few months, then on to the next, and so on. She told me about the progression recently: “First, I was into Dalmation puppies, then I was into pandas. Then I was into penguins!”

She was actually “into” pandas for a good year or more. What finally shook her from pandas was the penguin unit in her first grade class, where they learned in-depth about all the different species of penguins. So the ubiquitous panda drawings around the house became penguins instead, and our dinner conversations consisted of where Rockhoppers lived and how Macaroni penguins only live in Chile.

So in the midst of her penguin fixation, one day she brings home a book she checked out from the library about 2 penguin friends, it’s called “And Tango makes 3″. She had been waiting all day for me to read it to her for her night-time story. So I start reading. It’s a fun story about the animals that live at the Central Park Zoo in New York. Among the animals there are a small colony of penguins. It describes how the penguins live and play, and how the babies grow up, and the boy and girl penguins pair off and become couples, then have eggs of their own, etc.. all well and good. Then it starts into how there are two boy penguins that like to play with each other, and they don’t really notice the girl penguins. They’re named Roy and Silo. Hmmm…this sounds vaguely familiar. I think I read about something like this somewhere… The plot thickens… they find a round rock and pretend it’s an egg, and act like a paired couple, though they are two males. Oh yeah. I do remember this story. A few years ago there were some gay penguins in Central Park that made the news. Seriously? Am I really going to have a discussion about gay penguins with my seven-year old tonight at 9 pm? I just want to relax and watch Lost tonight. For real. I don’t want to deal with this. So, long story short, the zookeepers think it would be fun to give these confused lads a real egg, which they care for and hatch. They name the baby chick “Tango”, cuz it takes 2 to tango! How clever. Kind of ironic, since the two had apparently “tangoing” for quite some time to no avail! I finished the story and decide to see what happens. To its credit, the book is mostly factual, and doesn’t overtly push a particular point of view. But I decided to see what Liv would think. I finish the book and shut it.

“So. What did you think?”

“Well… it was kinda weird.”

Then she starts giggling.

“It’s funny! It’s like they’re gay or something!”

So then I start laughing. “Yeah! They’re kinda confused, huh?”

I asked her if she liked the book. Turns out she was expecting something a bit more pedestrian, maybe about penguins playing and swimming or something. She clearly got the bait and switch.

After I tucked her in,  a thought occurred to me. From an evolutionary standpoint, isn’t it a bit irresponsible for the zookeepers to encourage this behavior in such a small population? Since the chicks learn their behavior from observing the adults, doesn’t it introduce a messy paradigm to be so cavalier about tossing eggs to gender-confused waterfowl? It’s not sustainable, as someone eventually still needs to fertilize that egg…I’m just sayin’.

It’s not really on the radar anymore; Liv’s fickle tastes have moved on now…. to Huskies. That’s even more controversial around here than gay penguins.

The 3 musketeers, on the hunt for "3 Musketeers"

Halloween on the Palouse is always a risky endeavor. Usually there’s a good chance of rain. Some years it’s been 10 degrees outside and windy. We lucked out this year and had a fairly mild night. After missing Halloween last year (we were on the magical mystery tour through California) , our kids were keen to hit the streets in search of sugary plunder. Well, at least the block. They were not disappointed. This year Amelia was a “zombie prom date”, Alec was a mad scientist (witness the powder-burns around the goggles), and Olivia was a baby jaguar. But not “THE” baby jaguar, she’s quick to point out. Now that she’s getting older she’s above watching “Diego” and Dora the Explorer.

After letting them have their way with the candy explosion for a couple days, we have now combined all the candy, sequestered most of it to the freezer, and given them a reasonable amount to ration out as they see fit over the next few days. I know, we’re mean that way.  Here’s more pics:

At the ward "trunk or treat" a few days earlier

Ian as "Dr. Horrible". Awesome.

Hell's Canyon above Pittsburgh landing

Last week  some of our good friends invited us to go sturgeon fishing on a jet boat on the Snake River. On the way down I took this picture looking down on Hell’s Canyon.  It was a beautiful autumn day; not too cold, but  definitely jacket weather. Another benefit was the fact that the abundant poison ivy along the riverbanks had turned to brilliant oranges and reds for the fall, so when we made stops along the shore the kids could easily avoid them.

We were hoping to catch (and release) a few sturgeon. Along the way, we fished for small-mouthed bass and steelhead trout. Luckily the river is teeming with bass so it doesn’t take much to be easily gratified. Especially when you have worms! After several tries we finally got a bite by a sturgeon just after lunchtime. The thing with sturgeon is that you don’t just reel them up. They’re typically 4 to 6 feet long and can sometimes get (as we soon found out) up to 11 or more feet long.  Normally it takes 15 to 30 minutes of reeling and letting out line to wear them out enough to finally pull them in and have a look, then let them go. Last time we went, we caught 3 or 4 sturgeon, ranging from 3 to 6 feet long, and it took 45 minutes or so for the last one. Today was a different story.

After the first half hour, it became evident that we had hooked an extremely large fish. Due to the exertion needed to pull up the weight of this fish, we had to rotate through shifts with the adults on board, each person taking a 10 to 15 minute shift on the rod. We would excitedly reel a few feet in, then the fish would decide to descend again at will and let more line out. 3 hours later, no progress. It wasn’t tiring at all. We finally decided to try using the boat to slowly pull it downstream a bit. No luck. the line eventually broke, and we admitted defeat. Our friend mentioned that he had never hooked a fish so large that he couldn’t pull it up. So we must have hooked one of the oldest and largest fish in the river, who had been there since before the dams were put in. Now we can tell people it was as big as we want because we don’t have pictures to prove otherwise! Here’s a picture of Mary’s turn at the reel:

Mary's turn at the rod

Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur

I always forget how long it takes to get to SE Asia from the NW US. It’s not like a “quick” 9-hour flight to Tokyo or Amsterdam. It’s 9 or 10 hours to your hub city (in this case, Seoul), then the layover there, then another 6 hours to Singapore, or Bangkok, or wherever. Luckily I flew a Boeing 777 on the flight to Seoul so I was able to plug my computer in and catch up on some last-minute number crunching for our budget meeting. And, of course watch a couple movies. When I finally got to Singapore it was past midnight, and I’d been up already for over 24 hours. Problem was, I still had a 6-hour layover until my 1-hour flight to Kuala Lumpur. I figured since I was coming all the way over here, the least I could do is pay our Malaysian distributor a visit, even though there’s not a huge market there. To my luck, once again, Singapore has one of the most awesome airports on the planet. In addition to the free wireless internet, X-box game playing stations, HD TV theaters, indoor gardens, and free massage chairs, they also have short-stay transit hotel rooms where you can crash for a few hours. So for 30 bucks I got my own quiet, dark room with a clean bed and TV (like I was even going to watch it). I got a nice enough nap that I was relatively refreshed when I woke at 5:30am to get ready for my next flight.

When I got to K.L., Joseph, who works for our distributor, was kind enough to pick me up. As we drove into town I was immediately reminded yet again of the fact that in my experience, with the exception of Japan and Korea, people in Asia do not know how to use an accelerator pedal. This has borne itself out year after year as I’ve come to Asia. China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, you name it. Doesn’t matter the driver, they all do it. The idea of steady acceleration and maintaining speed is completely foreign to them. You remember back when you were 15 and in driver’s ed, and the instructor took you on the highway for the first time? And how hard it was to keep your foot steady on the pedal to maintain 55 mph? Well that’s how they drive here. So highway speed is constantly pulsing on the pedal– gas…off…gas…off..etc. as my head and upper body is being rocked forward and backward, and I’m wondering if my neck muscles will be sore tomorrow if this turns out to be a long drive.

We had a quick breakfast at McDonald’s, then he dropped me off to my hotel. After settling it, I found some lunch at the local mall food court nearby, then headed back to the hotel, where I promptly crashed yet again for a few hours.

For dinner that night, we went to a Malaysian cultural center, which had a large open restaurant scattered with round tables and a stage at one side. Around the perimeter of the room there were buffet trays of food, so I could try different types of Malaysian food. After dinner, the lights dim and then they have a dancing show, showcasing the cultural dances of the 3 different races that live in Malaysia: The Malays, Chinese, and Indians.

Quick history lesson:
Malaysia was colonized by the British in the mid 19th century as they found its climate favorable to growing rubber plantations, and more importantly, the port at Singapore (at the south end of Malaysia) had  become the central location for all trade throughout Asia, since it was a free trade zone. So the British based their headquarters at Singapore and brought in labor from India, their other colony. The Chinese were encouraged to immigrate as well and worked as laborers and as business owners and tradesmen. As a result, since the 1800’s there have always been Malays, Chinese, and Indians all living together throughout Malaysia and Singapore. The British encouraged this class structure, designating administrative and government jobs to the Malays, business to the Chinese, and labor to the Indians. After the British left in the late 50’s, The Malays continued this racial structuring, and in fact immediately began to enact laws to crystallize this, ensuring that only the ethnic Malays would have the positions of power and government, and guaranteed jobs and education to all ethnic Malays (but not the Chinese or Indians). As you can imagine, this institutionalized racism chafed (and still chafes) the Chinese and Indian population, and indeed this resulted in Singapore seceding from Malaysia and creating a secular state based on free trade, which has proved to be one of the wisest decisions they made as a nation. Malaysian politics right now are at a crossroads, due to this policy, and as a result there has been a groundswell of opposition to the ruling party from these disenfranchised races.

Back to the dancing dinner: Toward the end of the dancing they rounded up people to come on stage and take turns dancing with them. Of course Joseph volunteered me as well so I was one of the forty-odd people up on the stage, getting my Malay dance grooves on. The last part was hopping between two bamboo poles, laid parallel on the ground and moved together and apart by two of the dancers. I remember doing this in 4th grade P.E., so I clearly had the technical advantage over the other noobies.

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On Friday I spent the day working, I visited a researcher who is studying the soil and plant moisture in durian orchards. Durian is known throughout SE Asia as the “king of all fruits.” The queen, by the way, is the mangosteen, which I think gets the short end of the stick in this ranking. More on the durian below, but needless to say, from my business standpoint, it is obviously good to make some inroads into this research, if possible.

Later that day I gave a short presentation to a group of scientists at another university. It was on a Friday, and it was supposed to be at 11:30. However some people forgot the email, and others were just working on “Malaysian time”, so things didn’t get underway until noon. I noticed that after the first 5 minutes of my presentation, all the men had left the room. I figured I was either too boring, or not what they had anticipated, but oh well. After I finished, somebody remarked that it was the beginning of the Muslim Sabbath, and the men were being called to prayer at the local mosque. Attendance is not optional. It ended up working out just fine, we had some good chats with the female researchers there, and they were very excited at the prospect of using our sensors to help detect landslides and failing slopes, which is a notorious problem in Malaysia during the tropical downpours that frequent the area.

Saturday I spent with Mr. Yong. He’s one of the co-founders of his company, and in his late 40s. He took me for a day-trip to the Genting Highlands, which are on the mountaintops above Kuala Lumpur, and gratefully much cooler as well. On the way up, we stopped at a village for lunch. He wanted to show me a traditional small-town Chinese village in Malaysia. The older houses were made completely of wood planks, with corrugated tin roofs. There were some newer buildings (still, 50 years old) nearby, they were compounds of concrete buildings built in rows. Apparently during the 1950’s the Chinese government was actively trying to promote a Communist revolution in Malaysia like they were doing in Cambodia, Korea, and Vietnam. At that time Malaysia was still a British commonwealth, so the Brits decided to “divide and conquer” the Chinese population in order to nip the red menace in the bud. So they rounded up the Malaysian Chinese into villages and surrounded each one with barbed wire and armed guards. Anyone going in or out had to be thoroughly searched beforehand, to eliminate the possibility of the Malaysian Chinese providing the Communists with supplies. As it turned out, it was effective and the Communists never made headway into Malaysia.

After lunch, we purchased some local fruits, which I always enjoy here. Fresh mangosteens, rambutan, and lychee, things you can’t find in the US. Then Mr. Yong asked if I would try some durian. The durian comes ripe in August of each year, and people can’t get enough of it. The most puzzling thing about this fruit is that it is also the most nasty, pungent-smelling fruit you will ever find (and not in a good way). It smells basically like rotting garbage. Really. But it’s like wine-tasting to these people. They know the different varieties, and they go to expensive gala durian-festivals, where they sample the different types and the ones grown in different regions, to taste the nuances. In the past I’d always refused. I mean, you literally can smell the stuff from 10 yards away. But I guess I was feeling adventurous. It’s a fruit, after all, and it’s in season. It can’t be bad for you, per se, right? So he bought one and cut it open. I tried 2 bites before I had to give up. It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought, but still was not what I’d call “delicious”or even “tolerable”. It was definitely sweet, and had the firm, yet soft consistency of cheesecake. But it has a very strong and complex flavor, which tastes like an amplification of the garbage smell. It was very rich as well, and is one of those flavors that stays in your mouth for awhile. Let’s just say a little bit goes a long way. Oh well, at least I can say I tried it, which is more than I can say for Andrew Zimmern. Ha! Take that, Mr. Bizarre Foods! I see your braised sea cucumber and raise you…one durian!

Durian Fruit

We got toward the top of the mountain and came to the Chin Swee Temple pagoda and shrine that was built about 30 years ago by a rich Chinese Malaysian who built the first gambling resort complex at Genting. He built a fairly large shrine complex, mainly out of the feeling that he needed to make some cosmic restitution for all the sinfulness he was propagating with his new casino. So the shrine complex has statues of Chinese fairy-tale characters and a very entertaining scenic re-enactment (through statues, like at

Chinese Hell!

Disneyland) of the 10 levels of Chinese hell, and who goes to what levels, and what happens to you at each one. There were displays of decapitated heads being stirred in blood stews by demons, people being impaled and tortured in all ways imaginable. It made me wonder if Dante and the medieval Christian ideas of hell borrowed heavily from the Chinese mythology.

In addition to these displays, there were also two rather imposing enormous granite statues; one of a sitting Buddha, and the other of the Goddess of Mercy. His mother worshipped the goddess and raised her children to do the same, and as part of this they were not allowed to eat beef. He didn’t even try it until he left for college! As a result he still mainly only eats fish, and rarely other kinds of meat. I suppose that’s a good thing. He explain why  the Chinese notoriously eat such strange meats (snake, frog, etc.). He says the reasoning is that the devout don’t want to kill the cows or oxen, because they’re your friends and partners. They help you plow and till your field. Why would you kill your friend for food? This also reflects some of their belief in reincarnation, and that the higher-order animals are “better” than the lower ones. Therefore, the nasty snakes and creepy crawlies deserve to be killed and eaten, since they bite you and slither around.

At the top of the hill is an enormous hotel and resort complex, with theme park rides, shopping arcades, and casinos galore. This is the only place where gambling is allowed in this Muslim country, and in fact the ethnic Malays are not allowed to enter the casinos. It’s also sort of the “Las Vegas” of SE Asia, so it draws in tourists from China and the middle east as well. On the positive side, Genting brings in an enormous amount of tax revenue for the state, so the Malays are not too put off by it being there.

We finished off the day by eating at the “Passage through India” restaurant (I guess not to be confused with A Passage “to” India… nobody wants to get sued) in downtown K.L. Of course it was authentic, and it was wonderful. They don’t serve you the food on a plate, they give you a fresh banana leaf instead. You have to give the Indians credit for the most superb use of herbs and spices to flavor foods with. I could eat it all day, which I practically did and my stomach was hurtin’ as I left the premises.

After dinner, Mr. Y suggested we have a massage to wind down the day, which is very common in most Asian countries. He says, “we can have a left-wing massage, or right-wing massage….you know what I mean? In other words, left-wing means it’s not really a massage, they do anything you want. In-between left and right, you have places that give a massage, but other services are negotiable, or on the right wing it is just a straight massage, no hanky-panky!” I told him that according to his definitions, I was most assuredly only interested in the “right-wing” massage. So we went to a reputable place that he frequents on Bukit Bintang street, which is ironic, since that is the main “night-life” road in K.L. where I’m sure you can find as much “hanky panky” as you’d like without looking too hard. We had a very relaxing massage (fully clothed, thank you very much); it lasted a couple hours, until about midnight. I was definitely ready for bed and to catch my plane in the morning, back to Singapore to get ready for a week of work.

The troubled Cheese Giraffe

Above is one of Olivia’s latest works of art. This one of course is a keeper, it’s going into her portfolio. I made it big so you can you read the caption. She had Mary write it nice so it would be readable: “The Cheese Giraffe Never Had a Shadow.” That’s what she wanted it to say. Of course this precipitated my line of questioning.

Me: So he’s a Cheese Giraffe?

Liv: yes, he’s a cheese giraffe.

Me: Does that mean he’s made of cheese?

Liv: No, he’s just a regular giraffe but he likes to eat cheese. See? He’s thinking about cheese [points to top left corner] and his tummy is rumbling.

Me: I see. So howcome he never had a shadow?

Liv (matter of factly): He just never did. I don’t know why. He just never had a shadow. That’s all.

Makes sense to a 6 year-old, I suppose. It seems like quite a predicament for the poor giraffe, and especially insulting to have his creator point out this fact. I think I’d be at the very least self-conscious it, if not anxious about it. Why does he have no shadow? Is it his punishment for liking cheese? We will never know. Perhaps we don’t need to know. It’s an existential question. It just is, and if the cheese giraffe is content with it, as his creator is, then that’s fine. He’s obviously not bothered by it, since he’s clearly thinking about eating cheese, not the fact that there is no shadow being cast behind his posterior. A perfectly Zen situation.

“Dad, I am so glad I’m a girl. Wanna know why? ”

Yikes. She’s only 6, and it’s a bit early in the day to be talking birds and bees. I’m totally off my game. Wait for it….

“Because boys can’t paint their nails all the different colors like girls can. We can have red, or pink, or sparkles… boys just have the boring normal color fingernails.”

Whew! Didn’t see that one coming! Relieved, I agreed with her that girls certainly have much snazzier fingernail decor than their male counterparts. Then comes the uppercut:

“Besides, boys also have to pee standing up. That’s so boring! You just have to stand there all day (she demonstrates) and don’t get to sit down. It’s so boring!”

Yes, I guess it is from that 6-year old  perspective.  Especially when you want to take a load off and think about whatever 6-year old girls ponder when they’re on the pot. I didn’t feel it appropriate to mention the benefits of the male plumbing when you’re camping, or say, between innings at a Mariners game. She’ll learn.

This is the hotel we stayed in, the Hotel St. Josef.  It was close to the main train station, had a very reasonable price and, most importantly,  included free breakfast and free wireless internet, which are the only 2 criteria that matter! We stayed in Zurich, which is a beautiful city but dang expensive. One day after a late day we decided to grab some quick food, so I actually hit McD’s (I know, I should have been eating fondue or something, right? whatever). I got a small value menu and it was 11 Francs! With the conversion that’s still like 10 bucks! So we didn’t end up eating fancy in Zurich, it was mostly Doner kebabs and pizza. Unless someone took us out for lunch or dinner, of course. After Switzerland, we went to Germany for one day and then I spent a few days in Greece. I’ll post on that one next. In the meantime, enjoy the pics.

29 Palms, CA, in front of the ammo truck.

In this picture we’re in 29 Palms, CA, which is east of Palm Springs, smack in the middle of the Mojave desert. 29 Palms used to belong to the Army until Gen. Patton declared it was “unfit for training”, whereupon the US Marine Corps promptly scarfed it up. It’s still unfit for training, by the way. I was in the “ammo” section of this artillery unit, which meant that we trucked the powder and 155mm rounds from the supply depot to the artillery guns. The rounds are about 90 pounds each, so as you can imagine in 115° heat it can get pretty hectic when you’re trying to offload those puppies in a timely manner. On the flipside, once we were done, we had a LOT of time on our hands. As a result, we did various things to stave off the boredom, one of which you can see above. In this case we decided to have some fun with camo facepaint one day and see how “hard-core” we could look. I’m on the far right, in case you can’t tell. Our dew rags aren’t there for effect, that was the best way we could keep cool in the oppressive heat. Other days we’d do things like left-handed rock-throwing contests, or keep a tally of how many flies we had killed.

However, as a bonus, I did manage to get an impressive farmer tan each year, as you can see. I’m wearing glasses in these pics because I soon discovered that the desert air and contact lenses don’t coexist (at least on my eyeball).

Fort Sill, OK

In this picture, we’re resting under some trees at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, I’m on the far left. So we all thought 29 Palms was the most hellish place on earth to spend 2 weeks. Then we went to Oklahoma in the summertime. It rained at least every other day, and when it didn’t, the air was thick with hot oppressive humidity and the ground was constantly waterlogged. Our corpsman (medic) had to treat a few guys who were starting to get trenchfoot. I went through several iterations of changing, drying, and re-wearing dirty socks and shirts. After the first 3 days of marinating in my own sweat and never drying off, I couldn’t even stand my own stench. And then there were the massive spiders that you saw tumbling through the tall grass, the snakes, the lighting storms at night when we were so exhausted… We had a lighting strike hit our unit one morning as we were dropping off ammo on the gun line, it knocked out at least 3 of our guys who had headsets on at the time. Luckily they weren’t seriously injured. A few days later an A-10 Warthog (tank-killer attack plane) accidentally bombed and killed a spotter crew of another Marine unit who mis-marked a laser-guided missile target. We heard the bomb hit; though it was far away we could tell it wasn’t right. It was without doubt the most miserable time I had with the Marines, which is saying a lot, considering boot camp was no walk in the park.

My contract ran out in June of 1996, just before our first child was born. At that time, things were getting heated with North Korea, Pres. Clinton was sending troops to Somalia and Bosnia, and I had no desire to make my wife a widow with a newborn, so I didn’t re-enlist. I had (and still have) a sort of love-hate relationship with the USMC. I had to endure lots of unnecessary suffering at the hands of incompetent “weekend-warrior” officers who had no social or leadership skills. There were the extremes of physical endurance: physical and emotional exhaustion, the hellish heat of the Mojave desert, the icy bitter cold of the Yakima firing range in the dead of winter, the boredom, and the hurrying.  But still, I have many fond memories, telling stories and  playing games with my buddies, looking up at the brilliant starlit sky of the desert night,  and feeling the sense of accomplishment knowing I was doing things that most people wouldn’t dream of doing. I’m still proud to have served in the finest branch of the US military, warts and all.

Our house, Christmas eve '08

Even though we live in the northwest, and are further north than Maine, it is a rarity to get snow at Christmastime here in eastern Washington. This year it decided to come early, and it hasn’t stopped! We aren’t alone; Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Utah have all been getting hammered with winter storms early this year.  But it was nice to have a “white Christmas” this year, and the kids have been capitalizing on it as best they can, sledding and making snow caves.

On the Saturday after Christmas we planned to go to Seattle to see the family for a few days. That morning we  got a foot more of snow (in addition to what you see in the picture). But this time it was about 34 degrees outside, so it was WET snow. So I got my morning workout by shoveling a channel from our driveway to the middle of the cul-de-sac. It was very dicey getting around town that day. Luckily, once we got out of town, the highways were great both going to and coming from Seattle. While I’m enjoying the early snow, I still realize we have about 3 months more of potential snow weather….snowblowers are a wonderful invention. Here’s more snowy goodness for your enjoyment, along with a few extras:

Our icy porch

our deck, Christmas eve

Christmas morning, '08

Mary, Joan, Amelia, Micaella, and Liv on the ferry

Icicles hanging dangerously above our porch entry

I read an interesting article the other day in my latest issue of Discover magazine. It seems that astrophysicists are becoming a bit “unsettled” at the coincidences and organization that occur in our universe. More to the point, it seems less likely that life is a fluke of nature, but that in fact, the universe is custom-built to support life. Luckily I found the article on-line and you can read it here. It’s fascinating. An excerpt:

Consider just two possible changes. Atoms consist of protons, neutrons, and electrons. If those protons were just 0.2 percent more massive than they actually are, they would be unstable and would decay into simpler particles. Atoms wouldn’t exist; neither would we. If gravity were slightly more powerful, the consequences would be nearly as grave. A beefed-up gravitational force would compress stars more tightly, making them smaller, hotter, and denser. Rather than surviving for billions of years, stars would burn through their fuel in a few million years, sputtering out long before life had a chance to evolve. There are many such examples of the universe’s life-friendly properties—so many, in fact, that physicists can’t dismiss them all as mere accidents.

“We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible,” Linde says. Physicists don’t like coincidences. They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea. Life, it seems, is not an incidental component of the universe, burped up out of a random chemical brew on a lonely planet to endure for a few fleeting ticks of the cosmic clock. In some strange sense, it appears that we are not adapted to the universe; the universe is adapted to us.

Of course, this rightly freaks out physicists, who are duty-bound to find another explanation that doesn’t depend on an intelligent Creator. The current theory is that there are many universes, each with different laws of physics, and ours happens to have laws that make it habitable for life. Critics of this “multiverse theory” say it cannot be proved, so it’s no better than believing that God did it. In light of my own Mormon theology, the “multiverse” theory is even more intriguing. It’s gratifying  to see science and religion rub up against each other and give a tenuous handshake  every once in awhile.